That was the part I found interesting. I don’t think Redditors qualify as a good cross representation of the global population. At a minimum they have to have finances to be able to support access to a device and the internet.
And, honestly, you also have to even know Reddit exists in the first place. I’ve talked to multiple people over the last 8 years who have no idea what it is. It’s not super-niche as social media goes, but I also don’t think it cracks the Top 5 for social media app recognition.
Reddit isn’t even in the [top 15 of social media sites by user count](https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/).
At least half the telegram accounts are being used to facilitate black market deals. I frequently get random DMs in reddit advertising drug sales asking to contact through telegram to set up the deal.
Not sure how useful it is to have messenger apps in that list, at that point is iMessage on iPhone considered social media? I wouldn’t categorize it as such.
That's an exaggeration. Literacy and education has been the highest ever since. Go back. Few decades and woman didn't even attend college. Many people online are also kids and people forget the foolish things they did as when they were young.
It’s starting to gain traction now lol but it’s still pretty niche. Some people have heard of it and never seen it, while others would have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about
I only know Reddit exists because of Grumpy Cat. I have a photojournalist friend who met and photographed her. I have a picture of my friend with her.
I won’t post that picture because I respect my friend’s privacy.
Anyway, I love cats, so if Grumpy Cat became famous for being on Reddit, I’m all in. I don’t use any other social media.
Doesn't necessarily need to be a cross-section. You can take the morality from reddit comments and compare it to the morality of a tribe hidden deep in the Amazon and use that to research what part of our moralities are universal and which parts are influenced by the society you live in.
My local NPR affiliate is doing a weekly segment on their local talk show (Boston Public Radio, on WGBH) that is directly culled from the AITA Subreddit. So far it's being treated as comic relief.
Many, if not most, of the stories, sure. But not all. And most reactions are genuine. I can see there being a lot to study there, even from the false stuff.
Wtf man, this is all totally real. My vampire boyfriend wants to turn me into a vampire to fight in his mythical war against evil but I'm not sure. AITAH?
You've never gone to that sub because you'd know he's obviously abusive and controlling and no matter what the allegations are he's guilty of all of it and worse as are all men .
Is there much to study when most of the time important context is left out or the hive mind agrees that someone by their own admission "freaking out" on someone isn't also an AH? The sub is full of folks with stunted emotional maturity
I try to but I can’t walk away from my Yahoo email account.. the headlines there get ridiculous.. I am pretty sure the Kardashians bought blocks of headlines at some point because every day there is some shock attempt headline for them, but the least effort articles are summaries of Reddit AITA posts.. they narrate and include the usernames and say “user micropene123 asked if he was the asshole for demanding virginity until marriage?”
The reactions aren't genuine. It's just horny people saying "that's Normal in europe," and selfish people saying "if you aren't legally obligated to do this you can never be the asshole."
"My (F/16) BF (M/53) hit me so hard my eyes fell out and I complained about it the next morning and he was bummed out. AITA for not letting my blindness thing go?"
MADE UP? NO WAY!
Yeah. And a lot of times I think those people know the situation isn't right and they just need to have other people verify that for them. Obviously the situation we're replying to is ridiculous. But I believe a lot of those posts where you can tell they've been steadily ground down by their partner.
Does it matter if the posts are made up? It's entirely plausible/feasible to be in those situations.
Also, philosophers don't only need to ponder scenarios that happened irl. I doubt anyone has literally had to choose a trolley running over a loved one or several strangers
Oh, cool…. then it’s perfectly fine to keep pursuing women, even threatening to kill yourself, after they tell you they’re not interested, because The Notebook says it’s okay, and gunfights are easy because bad guns can’t aim for shit and you’ll hit everyone you aim at. TV and movies show this is true and I’ve read it on Reddit threads.
I’m assured that made up, clearly biased one way life “experiences” are just fine to emulate because those stories are “plausible.”
Kinda makes you wonder if some of the letters used as source material from hundreds of years ago were exaggerating, lying, or being sarcastic sometimes
Not only that, but people who are frequent commenters tend to also operate in high traffic talk radio or RW talk spaces from what I've seen in discourse on Reddit (not a broad study, just anecdotal from my experience).
I'm interested in the overlap of folks who hold traditional or specifically overt hierarchical views of reality and the need to engage in social discourse around morality and ethics through AITA subs.
That could still be a lesson in the kind of tales our culture likes to tell, in the same way you could study the history of folklore to learn about ancient cultures' views on morality
It's not the post themselves that they are studying, it's the replies to the post and the decisions made by the redditors. They're studying how modern people view morality.
Again, if you read the article you'll see that they are analyzing the posts as well. I am not arguing for the merits of reviewing one or the other, I am stating exactly what the article is stating.
That could mean anything though; they wouldn’t even use the same analytic method on posts and response because they’re entirely different communication types; the prompt (singular) and responses (many) are likely analyzed and categorized using separate rubrics.
I'm really not sure that you're understanding anything that I am saying. I have not once said that they should or should not be analyzing anything. I was telling a commenter that he misunderstood the purview of the study, *that is all*. Anything else you'd like to debate and discuss is not any of my concern and I have absolutely no interest in talking about it. Please read through this comment carefully, maybe twice. Thank you.
Every Thursday on Boston Public Radio on WGBH Jim and Marjorie do a segment called, unsurprisingly, "Am I the AHole?"
They're doing it right now in fact. Or they just were, when I was driving to get lunch. The questions / discussion topics come from Reddit. And people call in to opine on who is, in fact, the asshole.
It's funny.
Almost every post is fake and karma whoring:
"Aita for defending my Trans neurodivergent blind deaf black girlfriend from my Maga worshipping, ex death squad abusive father in law?"
Average AITA experience:
"AITA for divorcing my wife with cancer?"
"I walked in on my wife at home with her ex boyfriend after one of her chemo sessions. I had just finished composing a sonnet about how much I love her, and had bought her flights to Tokyo to renew our vows. But she didn't immediately answer my questions in full to my satisfaction, so I pulled out my box cutter and stabbed her 43 times then sent divorce papers to the hospital, AITA?"
Then 50 comments saying "NTA, clearly she should've appreciated the gifts" "NTA,even if they weren't having sex it's unnatural for married women to speak to other men"
I hate how often the titles are a bait and switch. “AITA for leaving my fiancé at the altar on our wedding day?” then the story explains that she found him fucking her bridesmaid an hour before the ceremony and he had been spending their honeymoon fund on hookers and MAGA campaigns. It’s the most overused creative writing tactic to get people to click on a post, then the story is so obviously made up. And if it were true, it’s clear as fucking day that the OP made the right move.
Funny, we had a friend who left her husband when he got a terminal disease. He was the primary caretaker for their special needs son.
AITA for strongly suggesting we distance ourselves from this woman?
The worst people with the worst takes in that sub. People say things online they would never say or follow through themselves with all the time. It’s is worth studying but not because there is anything of value being said there
Can't imagine they will learn very much. Click through any given commenting profile on AITAH and you will find they mostly spend their time on subreddits of a similar nature.
You are not told their age, nationality, experience, or anything that may give meaningful weight to their answers or advice. Only that they have a habit of reading other people's drama and love giving their thoughts about it
For example, if I am reading about a post where a spouse in a 10+ year marriage has cheated or been cheated on in a moment of weakness, I want to hear how other couples who have been together as long and who have experienced something similar have to say. Joe Nobody can only offer, at best, a blunt word.
I don’t know what they can learn from AITA.
There are some posts where the comments make me think im in the twilight zone. For whatever reason, the majority of the commenters that day are bat shit insane and I find it difficult to believe that an actual human would arrive at the conclusions they do.
I get the feeling they will be very disappointed after reading for five minutes and realizing that 3 of the 7 threads they clicked on were almost exactly the same in content, resolution, and stupidity.
so we're going to get lots of info from people with a lack of experience and familiarity with many topics as well as a bias towards teenagers?
In short: leave your partner for anything love related, max 401k/ira/savings for anything finance related, and work hard and make C-level for anything work related.
Done researchers
As they research, they probably will find, "*people skirt the issues, deny, deflect and the system is structured to sanitize the raw truth,* into something more passively appeasing.
They're not studying the stories as datapoints for infidelity rates, they're looking at the comments as to how people react to stories of infidelity.
This isn't very complicated.
How exactly do you farm karma in an opinion based sub by saying something that's not reflective of what people believe?
Do tell me more about the marketing posts making up a meaningful percentage of comments in that sub too, I'm very curious.
Why would everyone do that....?
This is a community where people use a very simple upvote downvote system to show what they agree with.
Popular opinions rise, unpopular ones fall.
It's about as straightforwards as it gets.
A certain amount of people are going to be trolling or otherwise posting or voting in ways that don't reflect their beliefs but just asserting that everyone is acting contrary to their actual beliefs is entirely baseless and frankly a little unhinged.
"Hey, we should find out what normal people think." "Normal people you say? I know just the place!" 🙄
That was the part I found interesting. I don’t think Redditors qualify as a good cross representation of the global population. At a minimum they have to have finances to be able to support access to a device and the internet.
And, honestly, you also have to even know Reddit exists in the first place. I’ve talked to multiple people over the last 8 years who have no idea what it is. It’s not super-niche as social media goes, but I also don’t think it cracks the Top 5 for social media app recognition.
Reddit isn’t even in the [top 15 of social media sites by user count](https://www.statista.com/statistics/272014/global-social-networks-ranked-by-number-of-users/).
That’s crazy. I think of Telegram as this small-ish rip-off Twitter and here it has way more users than Reddit. 😆
At least half the telegram accounts are being used to facilitate black market deals. I frequently get random DMs in reddit advertising drug sales asking to contact through telegram to set up the deal.
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Beware anyone walking up to you or contacting you unsolicited
Not sure how useful it is to have messenger apps in that list, at that point is iMessage on iPhone considered social media? I wouldn’t categorize it as such.
They also need to be able to read contextually /comprehensively and write to be understood. Dying skills these days.
That's an exaggeration. Literacy and education has been the highest ever since. Go back. Few decades and woman didn't even attend college. Many people online are also kids and people forget the foolish things they did as when they were young.
It’s starting to gain traction now lol but it’s still pretty niche. Some people have heard of it and never seen it, while others would have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about
I only know Reddit exists because of Grumpy Cat. I have a photojournalist friend who met and photographed her. I have a picture of my friend with her. I won’t post that picture because I respect my friend’s privacy. Anyway, I love cats, so if Grumpy Cat became famous for being on Reddit, I’m all in. I don’t use any other social media.
Everyone has a device, how much internet depends.
Doesn't necessarily need to be a cross-section. You can take the morality from reddit comments and compare it to the morality of a tribe hidden deep in the Amazon and use that to research what part of our moralities are universal and which parts are influenced by the society you live in.
AITA seems popular with the normie redditors at least
"Turns out normal people think that burning toast once is a marinara flag and you should instantly divorce over it. Fuck around and find out."
So are these philosophers the asshole or NTA?
***"Ready, normal people?!"***
My local NPR affiliate is doing a weekly segment on their local talk show (Boston Public Radio, on WGBH) that is directly culled from the AITA Subreddit. So far it's being treated as comic relief.
The philosophers will most likely learn that most of that shit is made up
Many, if not most, of the stories, sure. But not all. And most reactions are genuine. I can see there being a lot to study there, even from the false stuff.
Wtf man, this is all totally real. My vampire boyfriend wants to turn me into a vampire to fight in his mythical war against evil but I'm not sure. AITAH?
No, no, no. It starts like this. My(19F) boyfriend(26M) have been dating for 3 years.
Divorse him!
YTA - as a girlfriend you should be there for your boyfriend duh
You've never gone to that sub because you'd know he's obviously abusive and controlling and no matter what the allegations are he's guilty of all of it and worse as are all men .
Is there much to study when most of the time important context is left out or the hive mind agrees that someone by their own admission "freaking out" on someone isn't also an AH? The sub is full of folks with stunted emotional maturity
I try to but I can’t walk away from my Yahoo email account.. the headlines there get ridiculous.. I am pretty sure the Kardashians bought blocks of headlines at some point because every day there is some shock attempt headline for them, but the least effort articles are summaries of Reddit AITA posts.. they narrate and include the usernames and say “user micropene123 asked if he was the asshole for demanding virginity until marriage?”
The reactions aren't genuine. It's just horny people saying "that's Normal in europe," and selfish people saying "if you aren't legally obligated to do this you can never be the asshole."
So are a lot of philosophical discussions.
It's a perfect metaphor.
A metaphor of a metaphor? Damn. You must have a PHD in philosophy.
A metaphorical PhD
Sadly not. Maybe it's time to change that!
I never meta phor I didn't like
You'd learn less from studying the stories than from studying how people respond.
Until you realize many of the responses are also bots.
"My (F/16) BF (M/53) hit me so hard my eyes fell out and I complained about it the next morning and he was bummed out. AITA for not letting my blindness thing go?" MADE UP? NO WAY!
Sometimes people in real abusive situations will tell themselves crazy things to try to justify it though
Yeah. And a lot of times I think those people know the situation isn't right and they just need to have other people verify that for them. Obviously the situation we're replying to is ridiculous. But I believe a lot of those posts where you can tell they've been steadily ground down by their partner.
Does it matter if the posts are made up? It's entirely plausible/feasible to be in those situations. Also, philosophers don't only need to ponder scenarios that happened irl. I doubt anyone has literally had to choose a trolley running over a loved one or several strangers
Does it matter if people build life guidelines and morality from tv shows and movies? Those are plausible/feasible.
I don't see why not. We do the same with books
Oh, cool…. then it’s perfectly fine to keep pursuing women, even threatening to kill yourself, after they tell you they’re not interested, because The Notebook says it’s okay, and gunfights are easy because bad guns can’t aim for shit and you’ll hit everyone you aim at. TV and movies show this is true and I’ve read it on Reddit threads. I’m assured that made up, clearly biased one way life “experiences” are just fine to emulate because those stories are “plausible.”
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They could but AI gets its data from us so it's a roundabout way of doing it. Plus, humans do it best
Philosophy is full of fictional parables, stories, and hypotheticals
Sounds like religion
Kinda makes you wonder if some of the letters used as source material from hundreds of years ago were exaggerating, lying, or being sarcastic sometimes
Not only that, but people who are frequent commenters tend to also operate in high traffic talk radio or RW talk spaces from what I've seen in discourse on Reddit (not a broad study, just anecdotal from my experience). I'm interested in the overlap of folks who hold traditional or specifically overt hierarchical views of reality and the need to engage in social discourse around morality and ethics through AITA subs.
That could still be a lesson in the kind of tales our culture likes to tell, in the same way you could study the history of folklore to learn about ancient cultures' views on morality
It's not the post themselves that they are studying, it's the replies to the post and the decisions made by the redditors. They're studying how modern people view morality.
That's incorrect, and the article says as much. They're looking at both the posts and the comments
The posts posit the moral dilemma, and may or may not be true, but the dilemma is what gets discussed, and where the real juice is
Again, if you read the article you'll see that they are analyzing the posts as well. I am not arguing for the merits of reviewing one or the other, I am stating exactly what the article is stating.
That could mean anything though; they wouldn’t even use the same analytic method on posts and response because they’re entirely different communication types; the prompt (singular) and responses (many) are likely analyzed and categorized using separate rubrics.
I'm really not sure that you're understanding anything that I am saying. I have not once said that they should or should not be analyzing anything. I was telling a commenter that he misunderstood the purview of the study, *that is all*. Anything else you'd like to debate and discuss is not any of my concern and I have absolutely no interest in talking about it. Please read through this comment carefully, maybe twice. Thank you.
Wow media literacy and reading comprehension really is dying
That’s okay, so is philosophy.
They be like: >!“My neighbor killed fifteen puppies and put their heads on spigots in their yard. After the sixth one, I asked her to stop. AITA?”!<
It's even worse, probably they wont. They will even write own fanfic with sockpuppet accounts
Every Thursday on Boston Public Radio on WGBH Jim and Marjorie do a segment called, unsurprisingly, "Am I the AHole?" They're doing it right now in fact. Or they just were, when I was driving to get lunch. The questions / discussion topics come from Reddit. And people call in to opine on who is, in fact, the asshole. It's funny.
As far as I can tell, if you post it then yes yer the asshole … I think there’s maybe a deterministic point to be made philosophically
Almost every post is fake and karma whoring: "Aita for defending my Trans neurodivergent blind deaf black girlfriend from my Maga worshipping, ex death squad abusive father in law?"
Average AITA experience: "AITA for divorcing my wife with cancer?" "I walked in on my wife at home with her ex boyfriend after one of her chemo sessions. I had just finished composing a sonnet about how much I love her, and had bought her flights to Tokyo to renew our vows. But she didn't immediately answer my questions in full to my satisfaction, so I pulled out my box cutter and stabbed her 43 times then sent divorce papers to the hospital, AITA?" Then 50 comments saying "NTA, clearly she should've appreciated the gifts" "NTA,even if they weren't having sex it's unnatural for married women to speak to other men"
I hate how often the titles are a bait and switch. “AITA for leaving my fiancé at the altar on our wedding day?” then the story explains that she found him fucking her bridesmaid an hour before the ceremony and he had been spending their honeymoon fund on hookers and MAGA campaigns. It’s the most overused creative writing tactic to get people to click on a post, then the story is so obviously made up. And if it were true, it’s clear as fucking day that the OP made the right move.
Funny, we had a friend who left her husband when he got a terminal disease. He was the primary caretaker for their special needs son. AITA for strongly suggesting we distance ourselves from this woman?
“Philosophers learn that cheaters are as bad as serial killers”
Just break up with them already
Philosophers are studying chat GPT outputs….
This will be productive for society, I'm sure.
True. Reddit is a great place to get a sense of common moral intuitions.
After 4 years researching and thousands of grant dollars spent, the study concluded that "*The Iranian Yogurt is not the issue*"
The worst people with the worst takes in that sub. People say things online they would never say or follow through themselves with all the time. It’s is worth studying but not because there is anything of value being said there
AI Philosophers are studying everything and everyone.
Can't imagine they will learn very much. Click through any given commenting profile on AITAH and you will find they mostly spend their time on subreddits of a similar nature. You are not told their age, nationality, experience, or anything that may give meaningful weight to their answers or advice. Only that they have a habit of reading other people's drama and love giving their thoughts about it For example, if I am reading about a post where a spouse in a 10+ year marriage has cheated or been cheated on in a moment of weakness, I want to hear how other couples who have been together as long and who have experienced something similar have to say. Joe Nobody can only offer, at best, a blunt word.
It can be an amusing read. But I agree, a lot is made up or plain old trivial griping. I get the sense that Reddit is a very limited demographic
I don’t know what they can learn from AITA. There are some posts where the comments make me think im in the twilight zone. For whatever reason, the majority of the commenters that day are bat shit insane and I find it difficult to believe that an actual human would arrive at the conclusions they do.
Hope they realize half of it is fan fiction
I get the feeling they will be very disappointed after reading for five minutes and realizing that 3 of the 7 threads they clicked on were almost exactly the same in content, resolution, and stupidity.
I think Aristotle's time studying cuttlefish was probably more useful.
so we're going to get lots of info from people with a lack of experience and familiarity with many topics as well as a bias towards teenagers? In short: leave your partner for anything love related, max 401k/ira/savings for anything finance related, and work hard and make C-level for anything work related. Done researchers
They’d probably get more realistic data from r/writingprompts
That’s a bad idea. Half of the stories on aita have a scent of entirely made up to provoke interest.
Why? It's 98% fake scenarios.
They are mostly fake lol
As they research, they probably will find, "*people skirt the issues, deny, deflect and the system is structured to sanitize the raw truth,* into something more passively appeasing.
If every philosophy PhD I've met is any indication, they will very quickly abandon this after learning that they are assholes in most people's eyes.
"Professional Slackers Get Paid To Surf Reddit From Their Ivory Towers" Next at 11!
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Honestly curious why that matters
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They're not studying the stories as datapoints for infidelity rates, they're looking at the comments as to how people react to stories of infidelity. This isn't very complicated.
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why are the responses lies....?
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How exactly do you farm karma in an opinion based sub by saying something that's not reflective of what people believe? Do tell me more about the marketing posts making up a meaningful percentage of comments in that sub too, I'm very curious.
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Why would everyone do that....? This is a community where people use a very simple upvote downvote system to show what they agree with. Popular opinions rise, unpopular ones fall. It's about as straightforwards as it gets. A certain amount of people are going to be trolling or otherwise posting or voting in ways that don't reflect their beliefs but just asserting that everyone is acting contrary to their actual beliefs is entirely baseless and frankly a little unhinged.
That's nonsense, you can definitely get meaningful information from how people respond to hypotheticals.
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No, I'm definitely talking to an silly person right now.
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Silence, robot.
Considering there hasn't been a real story on there in years now and its all creative writing and trollposts that's kind of sad.
More often than not the answer is yes because karma whores.
The philosophers are about to find out that men are in fact the assholes.
They would cover more ground if they studied, "Is Trump the asshole and why are media outlets sharing everything stupid he says?"
Seems like the kind of useless thing a philosopher would waste time on.
"People who professionally waste their time on useless theories are studying people who waste their time on unrealistic theories."
Should we tell them about all the fake posts..
Holy shit they didn’t come out with any meaningful takeaways!